Replication Data for: Forecasting Dutch Elections. An Initial Model from the March 2017 Legislative Contests. Research & Politics.

Abstract Serious election forecasting has become a routine activity in most Western democracies, with various methodologies employed, e.g., polls, models, prediction markets, citizen forecasting. In the Netherlands, however, election forecasting has limited itself to the use of polls, mainly because other approaches are viewed as too complicated, given the great fragmentation of the Dutch party system. Here we challenge this view, offering the first structural forecasting model of legislative elections there. We find that a straightforward Political Economy equation managed an accurate forecast of the 2017 contest, clearly besting the efforts of the pollsters.